Approaching Abolition Through Writing Pedagogies

In the United States, high rates of crime are often attributed to the intrinsic criminality of poor, Black, and brown communities. Through the lens of prison abolition, it becomes apparent that the very nature of American crime is produced by white-supremacist, colonial systems which devalue Black and Brown life, joy, and art. Crime can be radically reduced if we develop a social contract which values compassion, human life, and justice above punishment; by creating opportunities for marginalized students to write about themselves and the world as they experience it, we widen the discussion about what it means to be human, and in turn, provide students with an act of catharsis that improves their mental and physical health. As we learn through Paulo Freire’s introduction of praxis, it is only through reflection, the act of writing about oneself and one’s life, and action, the utilization of one’s self-consciousness to change one’s environment, that we can imagine a world which does not relegate Black and brown students to a life contained in the carceral system. And so, the final product of this research is a workbook for incarcerated youth to explore creative writing as a form of identity formation through abolitionist principles. The workbook aims to give students an opportunity to create a new, self-actualized identity as writers. Not only will students be able to process their trauma and expand their literacy, but they will also be able to put their technical and creative writing talents to use in their professional and academic lives, ideally breaking away from the carceral system.

This summer I’ve been working on a project entitled Approaching Abolition Through Writing Pedagogies. The final product of my project is a writing workbook for incarcerated youth that allows them to understand abolitionist principles through the practice of creative writing. I began thinking of a workbook last semester when I was teaching a writing workshop at a local detention center. Through my work at that juvenile detention center, I learned just how inequitable the access to education is for students who are experiencing incarceration. During the few months that I was there I learned that classes would often be canceled for arbitrary reasons such as low staffing or conflict between students. This unpredictability in access to education for incarcerated youth led me to create a model for writing education which could be done without external resources like teachers or facilitators. The workbook I’ve been writing this summer focuses on three main components in order to facilitate the understanding of abolitionist organizing and writing principles. In order to write this workbook, I first began with library research regarding the best practices and terms of teaching youth poetry and abolitionist theory. In order to create a body of work that is truly rooted in abolitionist theory, it must also be anti-colonial, anti-Imperialist, inclusive of disabled folks, and anti-white supremacy. The workbook features an understanding of writing from the perspective of radical black and brown writers. In the creation of this workbook, it was also essential that accessibility be pushed to the forefront as a large portion of incarcerated folks in the United State are also disabled, and then also have their disability criminalized. The first lens through which I have created lessons for this workbook is through the understanding of abolition as a form of community building. In this section the lessons involve the use of writing as a form of community building. Because American prisons seek to disrupt existing Black and Brown communities. The writing in the section seeks to combat the phenomenon of social death which is produced by making incarcerated folks disappear by making writing public and communal.The lessons involve a reflection on community and how that community can then be mobilized to liberate itself. The second subsection of the workbook involves the use of writing as a form of self-reflection. Because neoliberal American education often fails to allow space for Black and Brown children to express themselves, their art, and reflect on their experiences, I wanted the workbook to create that space for them. In order to liberate ourselves, each of us must also understand ourselves. There is no room to create community when we have no idea where we come from, or what we do, or where we expect ourselves to go. The writing exercises in the self-reflection section focus on understanding how we feel about our current circumstances, how we were raised, and what we might like to see of ourselves in the future. This section also lends itself well to freedom dreaming as it gives youth the opportunity to imagine an alternative future and reflect on how they fit into it. The third, and final, section of the workbook understands writing as an abolitionist tool. In the workbook, the distinction that writing is a tool of abolition rather than a means of abolition is imperative so as not to put the burden of liberation on incarcerated youth themselves. The workbook is simply a mechanism which can promote liberation, not create the material circumstances for liberation. The workbook serves as a personal meditation on abolition, not as a replacement for widespread policy change which would liberate all incarcerated people.